Quote:
This year's Challenge was awesome! I had a blast! Thank you for all your help. Cindy, Las Cruces YWiC

Drunk Driving on the Navajo Reservation

Team: 104

School: Newcomb High

Area of Science: Social and Behavioral Science

Interim: Drunk Driving On the Navajo Reservation

Problem Definition: The Navajo Reservation is a rural area that has many roads and highways, which thousands of people use daily. An issue conflicted onto the Navajo Reservation is drunk driving. Based on studies conducted since 1995, Native Americans face a greater risk of 75% of alcohol-related fatalities than any other ethnic group. Of that 75%, more than 50% of deaths resulting from those fatalities are Native Americans.

Plan: Our goal for this project is to use NetLogo to create a computer model to simulate drunk drivers on the Navajo Reservation and to create or discover a key resolution to bring the percentage of alcohol-related fatalities down to a minimum. The agents will be place in a simulation that resembles a highway on the Navajo Nation and will have the factors of age, BAC level, and time of day, time of the year, number of drivers, and number of checkpoints in the surrounding area to generate the outcomes from the situation. After creating the computer model we plan on showing the model in several presentations in the near-by communities.

Progress: To this day the progress we have made is unsubstantial. We have researched the subject and have come up with enough information to start preparing our computer simulation. We are also in the process of learning NetLogo.
Results: The results I expect to get are for the younger the driver, the higher the BAC level, the later in the day and year , and the larger the number of drivers in the surrounding area is going to be the most devastating simulation in the project. I hope to find a solution through the simulation by adding checkpoints onto the road and bringing the number of alcohol-related fatalities down to a minimum.